The Return of the Native

Thomas Hardy

Summary

Book I, Chapters 1-5

Clym Yeobright -
The "Native" of the novel's title, Clym is the son of Mrs. Yeobright and the cousin of Thomasin Yeobright. He goes abroad to work as a diamond merchant in Paris, but comes home when he realizes that his ambition is not towards material wealth. He is pursued by Eustacia Vye, and eventually marries her, but their marriage turns sour when her ambition to move to Paris conflicts with his plan to stay on Egdon Heath and teach school. Clym is intelligent, cultured and deeply introspective. He is patient and generous, but also deeply determined, and fierce when angered: it is this determination that leads to his eventual split with his mother, and separation from Eustacia. At the end of the novel, weakened by a degenerative eye condition and by the trauma of losing his mother and Eustacia--for whose deaths he blames himself--he becomes an itinerant preacher, sermonizing about simple moral topics.

Diggory Venn -
Throughout most of the novel, Venn works as a semi-nomadic "reddleman": he travels throughout the region selling the dye that farmers use to mark their sheep. As a consequence of his exposure to the dye, his entire body and everything he owns are dyed red. Entirely red, camping out on the heath in his wagon, and emerging mysteriously from time to time, Venn functions as an image of the heath incarnated. He watches over Thomasin Yeobright's interests throughout the novel, but also preserves his own interests: he has long been in love with her, and at the end of the novel they marry. Venn is very clever and insightful, and can be a devious schemer.

Eustacia Vye -
Born in the busy port town of Budmouth and transplanted to Egdon Heath to live with her grandfather, Eustacia despises the heath, and searches for a way to escape. However, even as she hates the heath, Eustacia seems in her deep, brooding passion, to be a part of its wild nature. She has an amorous relationship with Damon Wildeve, but enters into a tragic marriage with Clym Yeobright when she realizes that he is the more interesting, and urbane, of the two men.

Damon Wildeve -
A local innkeeper, Damon is described as a "lady-killer." At the start of the novel, he puts off his marriage to Thomasin Yeobright in order to pursue a relationship with the woman he truly wants, Eustacia Vye; when he is jilted by Eustacia, however, he marries Thomasin, and has a daughter with her. He drowns at the end of the novel just before making an escape with Eustacia. He is interested throughout in possession rather than love.

Thomasin Yeobright -
Clym Yeobright's cousin and Mrs. Yeobright's niece and ward. Thomasin is an innocent and goodhearted, if somewhat vacuous, woman who seems genuinely to care for Damon Wildeve--who, however, is merely using her to make Eustacia Vye jealous. She eventually marries Wildeve--over the objections of her aunt--and has a child, which she names Eustacia. At the end of the novel, she marries Diggory Venn, who has long loved her.

Mrs. Yeobright -
Clym Yeobright's mother, and Thomasin Yeobright's aunt and guardian. A proper, class-conscious, proud woman, Mrs. Yeobright objects to the marriage of both her charges; as it turns out, she is entirely correct. She dies when, exhausted, she is bitten by an adder on the heath, believing that Clym has utterly rejected her. The daughter of a parson, Mrs. Yeobright considers herself--and is considered--of a higher class than the local laborers.

Christian Cantle -
An awkward, superstitious young man who works for Mrs. Yeobright. Christian provides comic relief throughout the novel with his dolorous over-certainty that he will never marry and his petty phobias. He fails in his mission to bring Thomasin her inheritance, thus contributing to the degeneration of the family relationships.

Captain Vye -
Eustacia's grandfather and guardian, a former captain in the British navy. A reclusive and silent man.

Johnny Nonsuch -
The son of Susan Nonsuch. The boy has the knack of being in the right place at the right time: he reports Eustacia and Damon Wildeve's tryst to Diggory Venn, and is also the one who tells Clym Yeobright of his mother's damning last words.

Charley -
A local youth who works for the Vyes, and who falls hopelessly in love with Eustacia.

Local laborers -
Local laborers whose simple dialect and observance of local customs form the cultural backdrop for the novel.